


the anarchic cause of snow

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Slings & Arrows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-24
Updated: 2007-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1640276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snow in the afternoon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the anarchic cause of snow

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Zai

Snow, Geoffrey had said. Just one word, while he ran fretful fingers through his hair and she watched it melt, flake by flake, on her dressing-room floor. It's all right, she said, and he kissed her before he left, taking the steps two at a time to bring the actors the news.

It muffled everything. It sat in pretty layers on buildings, on trees, on New Burbage billboards, in delicate edging on people's boots. In the quiet of the theatre bar, Frank was drinking, in a corner, watching Cyril pick out notes on the piano. "I don't think it's ever happened before," he said, softly. "Snow just between rehearsal and performance."

"So we don't go home, and no one comes to us," Geoffrey said. "We exist, just by ourselves in the space of the theatre."

It was the sort of thing he said either when drinking or when overtired. Ellen suspected the latter for once; she could feel it herself, the air like slow-moving treacle, the dreamy quality of Cyril's hands moving over keys. The play, the season stretched out long and comfortable around them. 

Geoffrey was sitting on the edge of the table, his feet swinging. He was reading Shakespeare, and Ellen saw him in her mind's eye as a figure passing through time: as a teenaged Puck, as Hamlet incandescent and extraordinary, as Geoffrey Tennant with the sharp-edged glory of madness, and as her own, loving and loved, words of poetry dropping from his lips. She smiled at him, and he didn't see, but that probably didn't matter.

Anna appeared, suddenly, her heels tapping on the polished floor of the bar. "I checked the weather forecast," she said, loudly enough for everyone to hear. "They say it might stop in time for some people to get here for the performance." She paused. "Then again, it might not."

"Stay with us, Anna," Geoffrey said, lazily, stretching out in feline fashion. "Ignore the snow, ignore Richard, stay with us."

"What are you doing?" she asked him, looking around the bar at the people in their varying states of calm and recumbency, taking in the low voices, the nocturne drifting up from the piano.

"Existing."

She nodded. "All right." Sitting down, she relaxed visibly, her hands curling loosely and some of the tension disappearing from the lines of her body. "I can do that."

This time Geoffrey looked up in time to see Ellen smile. His eyes were bright in reply, and she reached over to squeeze his hand. Snow melted into her palm, and she didn't let go, warming him with her body heat, holding him with her in this soft place in time.

 


End file.
